BILBAO, Spain (AP) — UEFA's Executive Committee on Wednesday approved an unprecedented qualifying system for the 2028 European Championship, with hosts England, Wales, Ireland and Scotland participating in the preliminaries.
The four teams will be drawn separately into the 12 qualifying groups, with the winners and the eight best runners-up advancing directly to the final tournament that will be held across nine venues in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Two spots in the final 24-team tournament will be reserved for the best-ranked host nations who did not qualify as group winners or best runners-up. The remaining berths will be assigned through playoffs between the other runners-up in the qualifying groups and the best ranked non-qualified group winners in the 2026-27 Nations League.
Depending on the number of berths used by the host nations, the number of final tournament spots decided by the playoffs may vary between two and four, UEFA said.
The tournament schedule is expected to be released later this year.
The Executive Committee met just ahead of the Europa League final between Manchester United and Tottenham in Bilbao.
A decision on the hosts for the 2027 Champions League final and the 2027 Women’s Champions League final was set to take place on Wednesday. But it has been postponed “for operational reasons” until the next Executive Committee meeting in September.
The committee also approved an increase in the number of players who can be registered by teams in this year's Nations League finals from 23 to a maximum of 26, “considering the dynamics of the end of season as well as an increase in activities over the summer of 2025.”
On the club benefits program, UEFA said that for the next cycle linked to Euro 2028, 240 million euros ($272 million) will be distributed in accordance with the memorandum of understanding between UEFA and the European Club Association. UEFA said 7 million euros ($7.9 million) remains available for distribution from the previous club benefits cycle.
After a proposal from the ECA, UEFA said that it was agreed to shift 3 million euros ($3.4 million) of the leftover from the 2020-24 cycle to the club benefit program for Women’s Euro 2025, increasing its size from 6 million euros ($6.8 million) to 9 million euros ($10.2 million).
The club benefits program is the clubs' share of the Euros revenue. It's the daily rate UEFA pays to clubs whose players are called up to national teams. It was created in 2008 to recognize the newly-launched ECA as a more democratic representative of teams’ interests.
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Manchester United players visit the pitch ahead of the Europa League final soccer match against Tottenham Hotspur at the San Mames Stadium in Bilbao, Spain, Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Saudi Arabia bombed Yemen's port city of Mukalla on Tuesday over what it described as a shipment of weapons for a separatist force there that arrived from the United Arab Emirates. The kingdom later directly linked the UAE to the separatists' recent advances in Yemen and warned Abu Dhabi its actions were “extremely dangerous.”
The attack signals a new escalation in tensions between the kingdom and the separatist forces of the Southern Transitional Council, which is backed by the Emirates.
It also further strains ties between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, which had been backing competing sides in Yemen’s decadelong war against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels amid a moment of unease across the wider Red Sea region. The two nations, while closely aligned on many issues in the wider Mideast, increasingly have competed with each other over economic issues and the region's politics.
Yemen’s anti-Houthi forces later declared a state of emergency Tuesday. It issued a 72-hour ban on all border crossings in territory they hold, as well as entries to airports and seaports, except those allowed by Saudi Arabia.
A military statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency announced the strikes, which it said came after ships arrived there from Fujairah, a port city on the UAE’s eastern coast.
“The ships’ crew had the disabled tracking devices aboard the vessels, and unloaded a large amount of weapons and combat vehicles in support of the Southern Transitional Council’s forces,” it said.
“Considering that the aforementioned weapons constitute an imminent threat, and an escalation that threatens peace and stability, the Coalition Air Force has conducted this morning a limited airstrike that targeted weapons and military vehicles offloaded from the two vessels in Mukalla,” it added.
It wasn't immediately clear if there were any casualties from the strike or if any other military besides Saudi Arabia's took part. The Saudi military said it conducted the attack overnight to make sure “no collateral damage occurred.”
The UAE did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the AP. Abu Dhabi's English-language state-linked newspaper The National reported on the strike.
The Council's AIC satellite news channel acknowledged the strikes, without offering details.
The attack likely targeted a ship identified by analysts as the Greenland, a roll-on, roll-off vessel flagged out of St. Kitts. Tracking data analyzed by the AP showed the vessel had been in Fujairah on Dec. 22 and arrived in Mukalla on Sunday. The second vessel could not be immediately identified.
Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemen expert and the founder of the Basha Report, a risk advisory firm, cited social media videos which purported to show new armored vehicles rolling through Mukalla after the ship's arrival. The ship's owners, based in Dubai, could not be immediately reached.
“I expect a calibrated escalation from both sides. The UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council is likely to respond by consolidating control,” al-Basha said. “At the same time, the flow of weapons from the UAE to the STC is set to be curtailed following the port attack, particularly as Saudi Arabia controls the airspace.”
Footage later aired by Saudi state television, which appeared to be filmed by a surveillance aircraft, purportedly showed the armored vehicles moving through Mukalla to a staging area. The types of vehicles corresponded to the social media footage.
Mukalla is in Yemen's Hadramout governorate, which the Council had seized in recent days. The port city is some 480 kilometers (300 miles) northeast of Aden, which has been the seat of power for anti-Houthi forces in Yemen after the rebels seized the capital, Sanaa, back in 2014.
The strike in Mukalla comes after Saudi Arabia targeted the Council in airstrikes Friday that analysts described as a warning for the separatists to halt their advance and leave the governorates of Hadramout and Mahra.
The Council had pushed out forces there affiliated with the Saudi-backed National Shield Forces, another group in the coalition fighting the Houthis.
Those aligned with the Council have increasingly flown the flag of South Yemen, which was a separate country from 1967-1990. Demonstrators have been rallying for days to support political forces calling for South Yemen to secede again from Yemen.
The actions by the separatists have put pressure on the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which maintain close relations and are members of the OPEC oil cartel, but also have competed for influence and international business in recent years.
There has also been an escalation of violence in Sudan, another nation on the Red Sea, where the kingdom and the Emirates support opposing forces in that country’s ongoing war.
A statement Tuesday from Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry directly linked the Council's advance to the Emiratis for the first time.
“The kingdom notes that the steps taken by the sisterly United Arab Emirates are extremely dangerous,” it said.
Meanwhile, Israel has acknowledged Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland as an independent nation, the first to do so in over 30 years. That's sparked concern from the Houthis, who have threatened to attack any Israeli presence in Somaliland.
This frame grab from video broadcast by Saudi state television on Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2025, shows what the kingdom describes as a shipment of weapons and armored vehicles coming from the United Arab Emirates, at Mukalla, Yemen. (Saudi state television via AP)
